Two years ago I was approached by our colleagues and friends at The Shakespeare Institute: would The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust be interested in collaborating on a new MA Programme on Shakespeare and Creativity? I was more than interested. The idea resonated through years of my seeing and knowing that Shakespeare is a tremendous source of [...]
Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right. We would and we would not Measure for Measure, 4.4.31-32 In a class I taught recently on Measure for Measure my students explored the dilemmas faced by present-day actors and directors considering how to portray Isabella. In the closing discussion, to add to the ideas [...]
2013 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Elizabeth Tanfield Cary’s play The Tragedy of Mariam, Fair Queen of Jewry, the first original play in English written by a woman. But it is really hard to appreciate in 2013 just what a risk Cary took in publishing her play; for a woman to publish [...]
Shakespeare and Still Photography I am delighted to be awarded the Louis Marder Scholarship by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. My PhD research on ‘Shakespeare and Still Photography’ relies heavily on access to performance archives, and the scholarship will allow me take full advantage of the Shakespeare Centre Archive, particularly, its formidable collections of photographs dating [...]
Sixty years ago on Sunday 2 June ago millions of people around the world felt connected to the coronation of Elizabeth II. That same day the news broke that Mount Everest had been conquered. This weekend seems like a good opportunity to remind people about The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Jubilee Education Fund. It was established [...]
Shakespeare has been a source of creative inspiration for many aspiring writers, who may only hope to achieve a fraction of the timeless appeal that his works have consistently held from the Elizabethan age to the present. My most recent post for Blogging Shakespeare focused on how Shakespeare’s writing influenced that of J.R.R. Tolkien, a [...]
Today, 22 May 2013, we celebrate the 200th birthday of one of the most iconic, controversial, and astonishingly original artists of all times: Richard Wagner (1813-1883). The eminent British musicologist Deryck Cooke declared that Wagner’s epic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) is the most ambitious work of art ever produced [...]
Speaking after the bombings that took place at the Boston marathon, President Obama stated his determination to ‘get to the bottom’ of the atrocity and promised that those found to be responsible would ‘feel the full weight of justice’. The word ‘justice’ resounded each time I heard the sound bite in the days that followed; [...]
Paul Edmondson and I were interested to read Diana Price’s courteous response to my blog about her book Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography. Here are some comments. She writes that I do not ‘directly confront’ what she calls her ‘single strongest argument … the comparative analysis of documentary evidence supporting the biographies of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.’ [...]
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